Friday, October 25, 2013

Montage # 128 – Back to Bach – Vokalwerke

As of November 22, 2013, this montage will no longer be available on Pod-O-Matic. It can be heard or downloaded from the Internet Archive at the following address / A compter du 22 novembre 2013, ce montage ne sera plus disponible en baladodiffusion Pod-O-Matic. Il peut être téléchargé ou entendu au site Internet Archive à l'adresse suivante:https://archive.org/details/Pcast128pcast128- Playlist
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English Commentary –le commentaire français suit

To conclude
our four-pack of “Back to Bach” montages, we turn to a significant portion of
the Bach catalog – his vocal works.

Although
this may sound quite simplistic, we can divide the bulk of Bach’s vocal works
into two great categories: sacred and secular works. Though Bach didn’t compose
operas, he did compensate by writing cantatas that can be staged, as well as
writing a number of monumental sacred works – the four passions come
immediately to mind here.

Two of the
works programmed today are secular cantatas (his BWV 211 and 212), and bring
you a recording featuring Jeanne Lamon and Toronto’s Tafelmusik “cover to
cover”. Tafelmusik, Canada’s
award-winning period instrument orchestra, was founded in 1979 and has long
been renowned in North America and internationally for its distinct,
exhilarating and soulful performances. Under the outstanding leadership
of Music Director Jeanne Lamon, it has excelled equally in music ranging from
the baroque and classical eras and beyond, including adventurous cross-cultural
reinventions of baroque classics. In the words of Gramophone, Tafelmusik
is “one of the world’s top baroque orchestras.”

Although
classified as a cantata, Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (in English -
Be still, stop chattering) is essentially a miniature comic opera. It amusingly
tells of an addiction to coffee. It should be noted that Bach regularly
directed a musical ensemble based at Zimmermann's coffee house called a
Collegium Musicum – an institution founded by Georg Philipp Telemann in 1702.

The cantata
text/libretto (written by Christian Friedrich Henrici, known as Picander),
suggests that some people in eighteenth-century Germany viewed coffee drinking
as a bad habit. The cantata's libretto features lines like "If I can't
drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment, I will shrivel
up like a piece of roast goat"—a sentiment that would likely have been
appreciated by the patrons of Zimmermann's Coffee House.

Mer hahn
en neue Oberkeet
(In English - We have a new governor) was originally entitled the
"Cantate burlesque" (burlesque cantata) by Bach himself, but is now
popularly known as the Peasant Cantata. This cantata's text (also by
Picander) was written for performance on 30 August 1742 on the 36th birthday of
Carl Heinrich von Dieskau, Saxon-Crown-Princely Kammerherr to the Rittergut
Kleinzschocher. Part of the birthday celebrations included a huge fireworks
display and, as was customary, Dieskau took homage from the peasants on the
same occasion. It is thought that Picander asked Bach to set his poetry to
music. In the cantata, an unnamed farmer laughs with the farmer's wife Mieke
about the tax collector's machinations while praising the economy of Dieskau's
wife, ending by especially cheering on Dieskau. In places it uses the dialect
of Upper Saxony.

Separating
the two cantatas is a single sacred work by Bach, performed in a chamber (yet
not necessarily HIP) setting by the Academy of St-Martin-in-the-Fields under
Sir Neville Marriner, augmented by a full choir and soloists.

The
Magnificat (In English - My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord), also
known as the Song of Mary or the Canticle of Mary is one of the
eight most ancient Christian hymns and perhaps the earliest Marian hymn. Its
name comes from the first word of the Latin version of the canticle's text.

The text of
the canticle is taken directly from the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:46-55) where it
is spoken by the Virgin Mary upon the occasion of her Visitation to her cousin
Elizabeth. In the narrative, after Mary greets Elizabeth, who is pregnant with
the future John the Baptist, the child moves within Elizabeth's womb. When
Elizabeth praises Mary for her faith, Mary sings what is now known as the
Magnificat in response.

Bach sets
the latin text to music for the Christmas vespers of 1723 (originally in E-flat
major [BWV 243a]), and in this “second” version, in D Major (For the Feast of
the Visitation 1733). He also set the German words in his cantata for
Visitation of 1724, Meine Seel erhebt den Herren, BWV 10.